


The end of the world (just not ours)

by hiyashi



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crack, Humor, M/M, Misunderstandings, Multiverse, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-02
Updated: 2015-05-09
Packaged: 2017-12-16 20:57:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/866528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiyashi/pseuds/hiyashi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Erik chooses apathy over anger and learns to play the guitar.</p>
<p>He also takes up theoretical physics as a hobby.</p>
<p>Charles has no clue what's going on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For the "multiverse" square of my XMFC Bingo card. Might feature a loose interpretation of "multiverse."
> 
> Also, tags are hard. I'll figure it out eventually.

00

 

Ultimately, there were two paths Erik could have taken that moment he heard his mother's last breath, saw any hope of a normal life dissipate before him.

 

He could hold on to that grief, let it fester and grow into rage, a thirst for revenge. It would become his life's mission, to set right all errors of men. To stop an infection that stemmed from the ignorance of humanity. He would become a lone soldier with a single, impossible goal.

 

There was blood on the ground, his fingers trembled. One second, and then another. One breath, then the next.

 

In another place and time, he tried to take the gun away and couldn't. He could do nothing at the gate and was forgotten. He lifted the coin and became the face of reformation. Another place, another time, a different choice. Not this one.

 

At that moment, heartbeat pounding in his ears, Erik saw two things. The lifeless corpse of the woman to whom he owed everything, and the man with the pistol that took it all away. Slowly he turned his sight away. He still saw red.

 

One heartbeat to the next. He could not close his eyes. Terror fled him, a new wave of emotions ready to replace it.

 

There was a choice. The man before him, the anger and hatred, the desire to burn the world down until it was nothing but ashes.

 

He wanted to scream. He wanted to cry, but he could still hear her. The memory of his mother, warm and smiling in spite of the ill-fitting clothes and armed soldiers. Her last words resonating with the loud pounding. “All is good.”

 

Let go.

 

He could be stronger, he would not cry. These men would not get what they wanted.

 

Breathe in. Breathe out.

 

The world sang to his rhythm – endless twittering of steel knives, cold rumbling of an iron poker displaced from fire, the sporadic interruption of brass buttons. The blood flowing through his veins the conductor of an orchestra.

 

The guns, the bullets, the coin.

 

Erik finally closed his eyes.

 

 

01

 

Erik is not a bad man.

 

That said, Erik isn't a good man either. Some days, he did not feel like a man at all – he feels like a floating thing, a single cog of a great machine, a small part of a larger collective conscious.

 

Those days he was usually high.

 

It did not help that Erik Lehnsherr is a man who can actually float. It also did not say good things about the company he kept that no one has yet notice anything unusual about a floating Erik. He wasn't even quite sure if they truly believed that there were nice little elves repairing all their dented metal appliances or if they rationalized it as technology advancing so far that even kettles were self-repairing.

 

That said, the company he kept left much to be desired, rationality and cleanliness among them. It was fine, another week or two and he'd find somewhere new.

 

Today is a floating day. The sun is no longer visible but the sky is still a soft blue edged by majestic purples and muted oranges. A pair of girls, lazy and dark, sit comfortably on the bare ground in front of an aborted attempt at a campfire. Several other people milled around the peripheral, Erik notices a fleck of golden blond at the edge of his vision before that too fades back into the hazy scenery. Everything was doing that, being pulled into the forefront of his mind before sinking again. He was getting some interesting ideas, if only he weren't too stoned to find a pencil to write them down.

 

There was an idea for time travel somewhere in there. Maybe if he stretched everything a bit and slipped though the gaps... that would probably send him somewhere out there with no air though. Maybe if he walked backwards. Or floated backwards, there would be no ground to walk.

 

Even to his drug addled mind, the idea was making less and less sense the longer he thought about it. Time travel would be a terrible idea anyways, even if he succeeded in going to the past there would be no way to go back into the future. Can't go to a place that doesn't exist yet, it was only logical. Ever expanding universe and all that.

 

What he's really searching for is an anomaly. He's felt them ever since that day his powers manifested. An itch at the back of his mind, the strange tingling spreading from his shoulder blades. The unaccountable knowledge that something else was supposed to happen and an uncomfortable awareness that he doesn't belong. As if being able to control metal with his _mind_ didn't make that obvious enough.

 

What he's really searching for is a different universe.

 

Probably.

 

The thought disperses.

 

Erik loses himself, enjoying the cool breeze, heavy with smoke. Maybe it would make more sense if he could stretch the space around himself so that when it snapped back, he'd be somewhere else. Like a rubber band.

 

That could work, rubber bands made sense. Erik conveniently notices a rubber band laying harmlessly on the gravel. It was a sign, rubber bands will work. Erik reaches to scoop it up and wrap around his pinky, a reminder.

 

This maneuver caused his already fragile sense of balance to abandon him completely, leaving Erik floating around upside-down. His hair no longer fell all over his face and he was surprisingly comfortable.

 

The girls are puzzled.

 

“You are not right,” one of them says with a heavy Russian accent. Her head is tilted and her hand twists the air, strange and sporadic, trying to convey Erik's lack of upright posture.

 

“You are not wrong,” Erik replies, confusing them further. Neither comment on the fact that Erik is floating.

 

Erik really needs to get out of here soon.

 

 

02

 

Sober, Erik immediately sees a major flaw in the “rubber band plan,” as he has taken to mentally calling it.

 

The fact of the matter is as much as he had gained clarity and insight to the inner workings of the universe, none of it makes sense to him when he's not completely baked. Taking another floating day doesn't help, all the perfect sequences escape his fingertips as soon as he starts feeling stable.

 

There is only one solution – he has to learn physics.

 

This is how Erik finds himself in the Radcliffe Science Library a week later with too many rubber bands decorating his wrists as makeshift bracelets. The more he reads, the less likely it seems that anyone would be able to survive the rubber band plan. Unless something was already traveling faster than the speed of light, accelerating it to the speed of light would already require an infinite amount of energy.

 

That sounded like there was a good chance explosions were involved. That or the universe collapsing on itself.

 

Regardless, he'd need a giant battery. The rubber band plan was put on the back burner for now.

 

Instead, Erik is on the verge of adopting a new plan to punch a hole though spacetime. He's pretty sure causing a local distortion is within his abilities, even if he wasn't quite sure about the logistics of it yet. He'd need to do more research on negative mass. There's also a problem of precision.

 

Erik was good with big things, things like contorting steel I-beams and moving large vehicles. He was even decent with small things like fusing back loose wires in radios. What he needs right now is on a scale so small and exact, he'd have to be able to manipulate the electrical signal input of the speakers of said radio so that it played a completely different sound. In addition he would need to be able to control exactly what sound came out, otherwise who knows where the other end of the rift in spacetime led to? It could be anywhere in the universe.

 

What he needs is a guitar.

 

 

03

 

Musical instruments were apparently quite expensive. Fortunately for Erik (and unfortunately for everyone else), Erik excelled at petty theft. Locks were useless at keeping him out and he had a natural sense of how valuable certain items tend to be. He paid for his overpriced and barely serviceable flat though petty theft.

 

Thus Erik was now the proud owner of a steel-string acoustic. It's body was a flamed maple stained dark red and Erik didn't understand any of the specs the salesperson kept rattling off but it looked amazing. Guitar couldn't be that hard to learn, it felt like every other person he met knew how to play one.

 

Erik could feel the steel hum beneath his fingers.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An insight into the mind of Charles, who shockingly gains little insight into the mind of Erik.

04

The first time Charles sees Erik, he mentally labels him “crazy guitar guy” and rushes off to class. More adjectives are added on as Charles finds out more about the man who appears to spend all day loitering in various grassy bits of shade across campus.

The red guitar is distinctive, the man with the hat is not. He usually has a small crowd of 2 or 3 people whom he completely ignores. Crazy guitar guy doesn’t sing, but Charles thinks the man plays very well (though Charles knows next to nothing about music). One day Charles takes the scenic route to meet up with Raven after her shift ends and he walks close enough to hear the crazy guitar guy muttering numbers. He speaks with a strange accent, his tone deep and foreboding. Charles then mentally dubs him “crazy musical numbers guy.”

Charles makes a point to take the scenic route as often as possible. He feels justified in the need for the extra bit of exercise after sitting though lectures all day.

The next thing he finds is that crazy musical number guy has intensely blue eyes. That day, the hat was off and he was arguing theoretical physics with a rather bland student who carried too many books. From what Charles understood, they appeared to be discussing the possibility of collapsing the planet. This was a subject crazy musical numbers guy seemed uncomfortably knowledgeable in. From then on, Charles just dubbed him “Apocalypse” because chances are, that man would be the cause of it. Plus “crazy eyes musical numbers guy” was a bit of a mouthful, even without ever having to say it.

He also overhears that Apocalypse sometimes models for the beginner’s life drawing classes and almost signs up for one next term. Luckily logic caught up quickly with the fact that Charles could barely put together functional stick figures.

However, he does invariably start walking through the art building daily to admire the displays after learning that tidbit of knowledge. The two things are unrelated - an appreciaton for the arts is valueble thing to cultivate and in addition, it is much faster to go though the building than around it between classes. It helps to counteract the extra excercise he gets walking the scenic route.

Besides, it's interesting to see how often artists will exaggerate defining characteristics on the human form (there is no chance that the muscles on some of those sculptures are in any way realistic...)

Some days, Charles can't help but pray to suddenly manifest great artistic talent. 

Apocalypse also appears to be fluent in more languages than Charles can recognize. Charles is particularly fond of when he speaks Italian. All the words sound like food and all the food sound delicious and horribly decadent. It helps him build up a healthy appetite when he would othewise subsist on caffeine and processed sugar.

Apocalypse doesn’t become “Erik” for another half year of scenic walks. Charles still hasn’t spoken to him. He has however, tried siphoning thoughts from his mind. Erik’s thoughts are the most intensely focused of any man he has ever met. They are also the most disjointed.

A lot of times, Erik thinks about how much he misses floating. “Floating” seems to reference some mild abuse of hallucinogenics but also seems to mean actual floating around. Erik’s conviction in his ability to float was a testimony to the effectiveness of those drugs, whatever they were. Erik also thinks a lot about rubber bands. Rubber bands are the reason why Erik is at the university. Rubber bands powered by giant batteries.

Charles tries to imagine it, but his own mind lacks the creative talent to do so. Erik's mind seems to believe that battery operated rubber bands look like a combination of doors and black holes. Erik also appears to believe that the entire thing is a horribly complex physics problem so Charles dosn't put much stock in his drug induced visions.

While Erik has no recollection of what classes he’s taking, he does spend a lot of time at the library studying. He also shamelessly steals library books by demagnetizing them with his mind. Charles strongly suspects that Erik is on drugs at least 90% of the time.

It still wouldn’t explain why while playing music, Erik’s thoughts consists of long strings of numbers. The number 261.625565 seems to come up the most often. Erik likely would've been a genius if his mind wasn't flashing "crazy" in bright neon signs.

Apocalypse becomes Erik when he joins a local band that plays weekly at the bar where Raven works. The band introduced themselves, but “Erik” is the only name Charles remembers. In his defense, it was the only one that sounded vaguely normal. Was there a purpose to having stage names when the group was practically anonymous?

It doesn't stay that way for long.

Erik is already fairly infamous among the students and thus draws a fairly large crowd for the no name band. Erik also receives a fairly large cut of the profits from the bar. While the other members are exhilarated by the fans, Erik spends the entirety of the performance thinking in numbers. It probably had to do with money, Erik was distubingly good at appraising the market value of the jewlery and accessories sported by bar patrons.

Charles attends every one of their performances. He’s just doing his part as an attentive older brother watching out for Raven. There is little chance Erik isn't crazy.

If self delusions were drops of water, Charles would be drowning.

05

Erik excels at theft, petty or otherwise. The only reason he hasn’t robbed a bank yet is a combination of being monetarily unambitious and an unfotunate preference for acknowledgment over stealth. If he were going though the effort to rob a bank, it would have to be the greatest heist to date. Regardless, it is too much effort.

This doesn’t negate the fact that rent, food and bills must be paid. Pawning stolen valuables takes more effort than he would like.

His first legal job opportunity comes when someone notices he hasn’t moved for 3 hours. He was practicing using his powers to control the vibrations of the strings but he has barely made any headway in the level of precision.

A woman interrupts his frustration with what is essentially money for doing nothing. The catch is that he has to do nothing for 4 hours naked and surrounded by students. Erik is floored by the fact that he can make money by existing and readily accepts – there’s an idea, maybe he doesn’t exist in every universe. It’s unsettling how a part of his mind obstinately clings onto the idea that he’s not supposed to be here when there is no proof any other universe exists.

He's not sure which possibility scares him more - that this is his only chance to get things right or that in some other world, he's done worst.

His second job is somewhat an extension of his first. It is also not quite as legal and yet manages to be slightly less exploitative of his body. Only slightly though – as a general rule the less Erik wears, the better the general reception. Put mathematically, the number of articles of clothing Erik has on is inversely proportional to the level of enthusiasm shown by the crowd.

Fortunately Erik is a man with his sights set on a goal and an almost complete lack of modesty. Unfortnately the rubber band plan progresses at a snail's pace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been having a weird day, going to the movies and coming home to find the dog whisperer parked next to my house. I wanted to say hi but felt awkward because I was carrying my box of ceramics. I also joined the xmfc chatroom for the first time in over a year.
> 
> So I decided to do something weird and start writing again. Or typing, in this case.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to message or whatever.


End file.
